A partnership with the Akram Khan Company, renowned for its intercultural and interdisciplinary collaborations and for challenging conventional thinking about dance forms, is at the heart of UAL’s new MA Collaborative Performance.
Recruiting for 2013-14, the new masters programme is the first UAL cross-college course, and Akram Khan himself is a mentor.
Achievement in Dance winner at the TMA Theatre Awards 2012, Khan worked with Danny Boyle on the director’s Isles of Wonder extravaganza at the London 2012 opening ceremony. His DESH production has picked up a host of awards, including Best New Dance Production at the Olivier Awards 2012.
Administered by the new Centre for Performance at UAL’s King’s Cross campus, MA Collaborative Performance is hosted by Central Saint Martins and takes advantage of the site’s multiple performance, rehearsal and recording spaces. As the first UAL course of its kind, it also enjoys special access to the creative opportunities, facilities and expertise at all six colleges of University of the Arts London – Europe’s largest specialist arts and design institution. This collaborative, cross-college approach will allow students to benefit from:
• Theatre design and performance facilities and research of the CCW Graduate School (host of, among many other courses, MA Theatre Design)
• Fashion and costume design research and facilities of London College of Fashion (including courses such as MA Costume Design for Performance)
• Research and cutting-edge technical sound facilities of London College of Communication (and courses such as MA Sound Arts).
The intensive masters programme offers a radical new approach to making and delivering performance. Informed by work with some of the most influential practitioners and providers in the discipline today, the course is designed to enable students from a variety of backgrounds to develop creative, practical and managerial skills as part of a collective endeavour. It gives them the freedom to conceive, plan, manage and deliver a piece of performance as a “company”, under the expert guidance of tutors and high-profile mentors.
Speaking about the course, Akram Khan says
“If someone came along and asked me to devise a course that reflected my practice and all that I believe in it would certainly almost be identical to the MA Collaborative Performance. I’ve never been comfortable with the idea that the arts live in separate worlds. They all yearn to tell stories about who we are and how we live. It’s really exciting and inspiring that there is a course at one of the world’s centres of excellence where these stories can be told. I’m so looking forward to being part of this course as both mentor, teacher and student, and to learn and give to talented people who are innately curious and expressive.”
Find out more:
- MA Collaborative Performance course page